More Hellish Gosnell Details

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who currently is on trial in Philadelphia for the murder of seven babies that were born alive and then killed, would, according to the grand jury report on the case, perform the latest-term abortions – “the really big ones” – on Sundays.

Gosnell did these very late-term abortions at his clinic in West Philadelphia assisted only by his wife, Pearl Gosnell, on the one day the clinic was closed, Sunday. Other clinic workers were not allowed to assist in these abortions and it is believed that many of the medical records of these procedures may have been destroyed, according to the grand jury report.

The grand jury report was released in January 2011. As it states, “This report documents multiple murders of viable babies. The evidence makes a compelling case that many others were also murdered. … It was Gosnell’s standard business practice to slay viable babies.”

“Gosnell made little effort to hide his illegal abortion practice,” reads the report. “But there were some, ‘the really big ones,’ that even he was afraid to perform in front of others. These abortions were scheduled for Sundays, a day when the clinic was closed and none of the regular employees were present. Only one person was allowed to assist with these special cases – Gosnell’s wife.”

One of the strongest practical arguments in favor of the Roe regime is that abortion has been around since time immemorial and outlawing it only drove it underground, leading women to endanger themselves by seeking out the services of back-alley quacks. The Philadelphia grand jurors recounted a powerful example from their own city’s history.

It was called the Mother’s Day Massacre. A young Philadelphia doctor “offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women who were bused to his clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972, in their second trimester of pregnancy.” The women didn’t know that the doctor “planned to use an experimental device called a ‘super coil’ developed by a California man named Harvey Karman.”

A colleague of Karman’s Philadelphia collaborator described the contraption as “basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. . . . They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, . . . the gel would melt and these . . . things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus.”

Nine of the 15 Chicago women suffered serious complications. One of them needed a hysterectomy. The following year, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It would be 37 more years before the Philadelphia doctor who carried out the Mother’s Day Massacre would go out of business. His name is Kermit Gosnell.

There’s certainly been a campaign on the right, to make it — to in lieu of being able to actually ban abortions, just to make it incredibly difficult to get. And this is obviously the downside of that, right? That people wind up going outside the law. And actually though, I think the abortion rights movement, I mean, is not defending Gosnell here. Although, somebody from the National Abortion Federation refused to certify his clinic and then didn’t call the cops, which is pretty damning. (Real Clear Politics has more video.)

Smith fired off this nonsense on a national cable news channel Monday, even though the truth happens to be the complete opposite of what he said.

First off, what Smith is really saying is that protesters in front of Gosnell’s clinic might have saved women from these horrors.

Secondly, it wasn’t regulation restricting abortion that brought Gosnell to trial for the capital murder of seven babies and a patient; it was a lack of regulation and oversight.

According to Grand Jury testimony, it was pro-abortion politics winning the day that allowed a breathtaking amount of evil to occur for almost two decades. The testimony states that the Department of Health stopped making official inspections of abortion clinics in ’93 or ’94 out of concern that such a thing “would be putting up a barrier to women” seeking abortions. Had those inspections not been stopped for political reasons, Gosnell might have been stopped decades ago.

Smith isn’t the only leftist making this same ridiculous argument. Many have said the same. But all their argument proves is that the left is obviously much more concerned with protecting the sacrament of abortion politics than they are with the well-being and safety of women seeking legal abortions.

Many prominent Democratic politicians oppose any meaningful restrictions on late-term abortions. President Obama, as a state senator, fought a law that would have protected live infants accidentally delivered during an abortion. Sen. Barbara Boxer once said that constitutional rights begin when you bring the baby home from the hospital. Prosecutors almost never try to enforce violations of late-term abortion laws, in part because the Supreme Court says any abortion is constitutional if the mother’s psychological health would be endangered by continuing the pregnancy.

Regardless, Gosnell isn’t only being charged with performing illegal late-term abortions. He’s being charged with delivering viable babies and killing them. The really profound question here is what is the moral difference between killing a living baby that is outside the mother for a few seconds and killing one that’s still inside. It’s no wonder the media would rather talk about itself.